December 16, 2011

Story Bit: The Little Engine that Could

 

Our story bit book for this week was The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper.  This book was read multiple times to increase students literacy skills in many ways.  This week we discussed three vocabulary words found in the book; dingy, bellowed, and persevere. Because perseverance is a word we want children to use and practice, we focused on what perseverance looks like and what are some examples of when they persevered through something.

Visiting Teacher from China

Thursday and Friday we had the privilege of having a visiting teacher from China come to our classroom to teach us about;  her culture which included photos of her home town, Chinese characters, pronunciations for numbers 1-10, eye massages (which every class in China does for 10minutes a day),  and the children created t-shirt origami.  Thank you Tao, we had lots of fun!

Lunar Rocks!!!  

Mr. Allan Miller, our SCS 6-8 Principal brought Lunar rocks to our classroom on Monday!  These very special rocks are on loam from NASA.  The children did a lot of thinking and wondering about;  How these rocks were found, and where they were found.  After Mr. Miller left we generated several questions we wanted to ask Mr. Miller.  On Wednesday, Mrs. Hazen's class joined ours to teach Mr. Miller our "Count Down to Blast off" song and ask him some burning questions.  This was a very special opportuntiy and one to remember!

Charles' News

The Journey team would like to announce that Charles has became a proud Daddy once again on December 8th, 2011.  Welcome Baby Elias!  Kathy Carey will be in for Charles until Christmas break.

Classroom Update

Theme: Family Traditions and Other Cultures

Math: Growing patterns, counting and comparing sets, adding and subtracting, money (the penny)

Reading Workshop: Partner Reading, Building stamina for independent reading, Learning How to Choose Just Right Books, and Guided Reading Groups
Writing Workshop: Sentence structure and beginning Personal Narratives.

Phonics: We have finished our unit on learning lower case letters and letter sounds. Kids are also pulling the sounds apart they hear in words and "pushing" the sounds with the help of Rocky the Robot. We have a fun song your child can teach you (to the toon of head shoulders knees and toes).

Stretch the word our hear it's sounds, hear it's sounds.
Stretch the word our hear it's sounds, hear it's sounds.
My  ears always hear the sounds that letters make.
Stretch the word our hear it's sounds, hear it's sounds!